


Un-Shepard

by ppeacherine



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Cloning Blues, F/M, Takes place sometime in ME2, duplicate paradox, garrus pines deeply, me pointing and laughing at writing ANOTHER pining fic instead of a multichapter story, shepard is the un-shepard, shepard thinks he's her little brother and tries to ignore the crush he has on her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:28:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27042745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ppeacherine/pseuds/ppeacherine
Summary: Cameron Shepard is not Shepard. She is not the seamless continuation of a hero. She is not her own person, either. She spends her "nights" on the Normandy turning over the same thoughts, reliving the same fears that she is a ghost in the skin of someone else.
Relationships: Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian
Kudos: 6





	Un-Shepard

**Author's Note:**

> I always had a lot of feelings about my Shepard, especially because I was like, convinced she would end up with the entire cast hating her just for being excessively renegade. SHOCK AND AWE that she did not, and I ended up developing a really soft fondness for one-sided Shepard/Garrus, where Garrus was hopelessly in love with Shepard and it was just... not reciprocated because of her mentor role to him.
> 
> Also, the teletransportation paradox really messed with me wrt: Mass Effect, so here we are. I started this in 2018 and finished it at work a week ago.

The Normandy ran quiet, leaving little to cover up the sounds of pacing once everyone had retired for the night (or what was the closest thing imaginable to _the night_ in ship time). It thrummed and shifted like any mechanical marvel but barring a major change in the drive or an alarm, it always left Shepard wanting ways to hide.

At night, she felt more like _un-Shepard._ Sleeping was an unpleasant way to contact the state she had been in before Cerberus (Miranda, Shepard corrects. Miranda, because she was tangible rather than leaving it up to Cerberus and the Illusive Man who may as well have been a poor stand in for god when they raised the dead) brought her back. Although having been clinically dead for… two years? Left her hard pressed to describe it as _resurrection_ as much as cloning.

People weren’t like machines. They couldn’t just be rebooted with the same general processes and resume exactly where they’d been left. They can’t be patched over, updated, and most importantly, they did not view themselves as a plural entity. Legion was a “we”, EDI was a “she”, but they were vast networks existing in multiple places at once. EDI was the Normandy _and_ her synthetic shell. Legion was both their unit, and yet a collective consciousness part of a many.

There was only one Cameron Shepard, and Cameron Shepard was _dead._

The Shepard she was now, the Shepard that stood bathed in the pale blue lights of her quarters, was the _un-Shepard._ The memories and choices of the Shepard before made her, but she was not the seamless continuation of those memories and choices. She was not _that_ Shepard _._ She was not _that_ Shepard, who defeated Saren and prevented (or, well, stalled) the Reaper invasion. She was someone else, that was neither here nor there and instead existed in an unending present.

_Two years._

She raises a stiff hand to the star filled panels of glass that frame her quarters, but her fingers don’t reach. Nothing reaches, really – her nerves feel distant and her chest tight. The deep breath takes the stars out of her vision, but it does little else.

Her racing pulse tells her she’s certainly alive, and she’s without a doubt human (God, imagine the irony: the legendary commander Shepard, revealed to be a synthetic… or worse, a husk). But _which_ human and _how_ human were always on her mind.

Kaiden and Jack, they were augmented. Miranda was _created,_ but she was still birthed and raised in a way. There was no doubt that she was who she was (genetics bringing ease to her rise or not). Shepard was neither. A scene skip in the movie of someone else’s life. She remembers how she felt about everything before the destruction of the Normandy, but it’s colored by her experiences so far as un-Shepard.

She remembers being cold and direct, filled with a tightly bridled rage and a deeply hidden guilt over her survivor status. She had _continually_ dodged death. The ghosts of her inability to die with her ship haunted her. Her words to command were always critical and off-course, and anyone who wasn’t in her situation could be damned. She’d told Kaiden off for nursing a crush on her. She respected Garrus but didn’t feel any real kinship with him. Ashley was another natural casualty of the profession and her command.

But since she’d become un-Shepard, she felt Ashley’s loss. She could see how Kaiden hurt when he looked at her, how upset he was with her perceived betrayal – and she felt _frustration_ that he didn’t know her well enough with all his infatuation that she would _always_ carry out the greater good for her men and the civilians looking to her for protection.

Garrus was like a little brother to her. Pursuing her approval, seeking her advice. She was proud of his growth, and even now—

“You’re going to wake up the whole ship. Or wear a new hole in it,” the Turian doesn’t knock anymore. Shepard never had anything that couldn’t be seen by the whole ship happening in her quarters. Garrus kicks off the door frame and tilts his head, flexing his mandibles in a brief acknowledgement of her greeting nod. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t personally look forward to being chewed out by maintenance.”

“Do you remember when we met Kaiden again? How he accused me of betraying the alliance? Him?”

She furrows her dark brows, casting her gaze to Garrus’s approaching reflection. “Alenko is more of the boot licking type, Shepard. I wouldn’t take it personally.”

“He asked where I’d gone.”

“We all did. We all were told you were dead, and then suddenly you weren’t. Suddenly the great Shepard returns from the dead, no explanation. Truly unbelievable,” Garrus says it gently, with just enough intonation to make it halfway a joke at the end.

Cameron remains silent. She presses her forehead to the cool glass, “Was that me?”

Garrus’s head tilts curiously, birdlike. He’d raise an eyebrow if he could. Folding his arms across his chest, he comes close enough to lean his back against the glass beside Shepard. Here, he was close enough to see the surgical scars raked across her dark brown skin. The way her lips were cut through into a blur on the left corner, the slant of her several-times broken nose.

The gold flecks in her eyes. She looked so distant, lacking her usual ferocity and steel. Fragile.

“Do you think it wasn’t?”

It takes a long moment before she looks at him again, turning her head just barely with the glass pulling the closely cropped curls. How was she going to say yes, let alone to someone that looked up to her? And even then, if she said she felt like she was a fake, she’d be remanded to Dr. Chakwas – well, maybe not if she told Garrus, but certainly if she told anyone else.

He shifts, reaching out slowly, so he could place a gloved hand on her shoulder. “Cameron,” a sigh, Garrus tries again, “Shepard, it’s just you and me. Whatever you say in this room will stay here.”

She wishes his touch could ground her. Wishes she felt the same enough to rest her cheek in his hand and let him support her.

Just once, so she would not have to carry the weight anymore.

“I can’t stop thinking about it, Garrus. Who— _what_ am I. Everyone says I’m Shepard. But I don’t feel like Shepard. I woke up and suddenly I _am._ I’m different from… her. I’ve done things differently from her.”

“Are you still Cameron?”

“…Yeah.”

Garrus hums thoughtfully, drawing his hand away. “Do you have to be… exactly who you were?”

Cameron closes her eyes, furrowing her brows down. Was there an alternative? The Alliance, Cerberus, everyone, needed Commander Shepard, even if only in valor and visage. The details didn’t matter. And her crew… Her crew needed her to be Commander Shepard. They did not need the un-Shepard, a ghost possessing a once-mangled body. “Well, I certainly can’t restart as anything else.”

She knows that’s not what Garrus means, but she doesn’t know how to face the crushed expectations if she deviated too much from the formula they expected of her. The fear or unrest that would surge through the crew. Kaiden’s belief of her traitorous nature, maybe when Cerberus resurrected her they’d intentionally crossed some wires to get what they needed. The accusation that she’d been manipulated easily over the reaper. The hysteria that would spread in the Normandy if un-Shepard became vogue.

She inhales deeply, she’s not a coward. “You know they need the original Shepard.”

“Well, damn them. What do you need?”

_To be at home. To be strong. To be weak._ Not carrying the entire weight of the Alliance military, the Reapers, everything, upon herself. Not being alone. _Let him help._

She pushes away from the window, walking primly to the sofa within her quarters and collapsing down on it. Resting her elbows on her knees and doubling over, she asks Garrus to pour her a drink and rubs her forehead.

“Shepard, you can’t keep pretending to be something you’re not just because it might ruffle some feathers. The truth is,” He sits beside her, body turned, and passes her a small glass of peach whiskey, “We follow you because of you in the moment. Sure, you’re not the same down to the atom or thought, but… You’re still brave. Strategic. You don’t take any shit in this life or the next.”

Cameron snorts on the liquor, burning her nose and throat. “Reassuring, Garrus. I’m glad you’ll remember me for not my deeds, but the amount of times I’ve told someone to go fuck themselves.”

“Oh, I try,” he does. He means it. “Besides, all your wartime valor has only made you one part of Shepard. Those medals, those awards, yeah, they’re made out to Commander Cameron Shepard… But, I’ll tell you how I know you’re Shepard. _Our_ Shepard,”

He matches her posture to speak quietly. She leans in, feeling his breath against her ear, “Because you’d still take a bullet for any one of us. Or give out a few. You don’t let anything, or anyone stand between you and saving others. Everything in your core is still there, and no weird science or Cerberus manipulation is going to change that. So what if you bent a few rules – you were there when I told C-Sec where to put it.”

Sipping at her drink, Cameron takes in those words. Everything she believed _was_ the same. It hadn’t changed. Her duty hadn’t changed. Maybe her skin felt wrong sometimes, but… She looks at Garrus when he straightens back up.

“And even if you wanted to be a different Shepard, I’d still be… I’d still serve with you. Even if you never feel like the old Shepard. I’ll still be with you, until you find where you want to be.”

“If every soldier in the Alliance had half as much loyalty and instinct as you, Garrus, we’d probably see a lot fewer messes,” Cameron sighs into her glass one last time before sitting up.

“That praise might be higher if you weren’t currently aiding Cerberus, just a thought,” they both laugh, and Garrus continues with a shrug, “besides, if you hadn’t taken a risk on me back when I was but a C-Sec detective, we wouldn’t have made it here. The least I could do is repay the favor.”

It would always be more than a favor to him. He wonders if Shepard knows, when he looks over her softly while she laughs at something she hasn’t said yet.

“Made it here… I’m guessing that’s excluding the part where half your face got taken off, Vakarian.”

“Oh, I don’t know if that’s _such_ a bad thing. I get more _looks_ now. The ones with the eyebrows – well, if they have eyebrows, but you know what I mean,” he drapes his arm across the back of the sofa, finishing his drink and falling into a much more comfortable silence with Shepard than the one he’d walked in on.

“They do love scars,” Shepard says absently after a few moments, thumbing her own across her mouth. She wasn’t shy about the handful she’d had before the loss of the first Normandy, although her new ones were a reminder of her patchwork state. Garrus’s were a point of valor and ideals, hers were… She shakes her head. Maybe they could just _be,_ for once. Regardless of Alenko’s sour opinion or the suspicious eyes she now got.

Garrus pours her another drink, which she downs quickly and he jokingly tells her to slow down. She shifts her posture towards him then, putting the glass aside and finally allowing herself a moment to relax. To be as tired as she felt.

“I don’t want to put you in a strange position, Garrus, but would you mind staying with me, tonight?”

She keeps their gazes locked, even though the Turian shows a glimmer of surprise – shock – maybe even a split second of being bashful, “Commander, the _impropriety.”_

They had to joke to cope. Shepard shoves him gently. Slowly, as if she were balancing a great weight, she leans in to rest the back of her head on the slope of his chest and collar, draping one leg off the sofa and propping the other up and comfortably folding her arms across her chest.

“You remind me of a cat, Shepard,” he wants to touch her hair, to trace her high cheekbones and strong jaw. He does neither, settling in with her and tilting his head back instead.

They both give a long sigh in unison, over things that were wrong and could never be right. Things that they wanted and could never have.

“Next time I get blown to bits, do me a favor and make sure they bring me back as one.”

A beat, before he opens his eyes with a squint.

“Archangel and the pussy cat.”

“God, never mind. I’m haunting your ass.”


End file.
